The non-working FN keys is perhaps the most annoying problem that we encounter right after a new Linux installation on our favorite netbook. If you try to change the screen brightness the keyboard does not work anymore. This is not that kind of problem you can simply ignore... it has to be quickly fixed and fortunately a solution is already available!

A patch has been released which fixes the problem, and it has been already applied to main development trunks of official kernels. Almost all the main distro have merged it on their own kernels (Ubuntu has merged it just yesterday, so the problem will be officially fixed when the next kernel will be released).

In the meanwhile, we have to manually patch and recompile the kernel.
For more informations about the issue and for patch download, take a look here:

voRia wrote:
The non-working FN keys is perhaps the most annoying problem that we encounter right after a new Linux installation on our favorite netbook. If you try to change the screen brightness the keyboard does not work anymore. This is not that kind of problem you can simply ignore... it has to be quickly fixed and fortunately a solution is already available!

A patch has been released which fixes the problem, and it has been already applied to main development trunks of official kernels. Almost all the main distro have merged it on their own kernels (Ubuntu has merged it just yesterday, so the problem will be officially fixed when the next kernel will be released).

In the meanwhile, we have to manually patch and recompile the kernel.
For more informations about the issue and for patch download, take a look here:

Hi!
To get the 2.6.27-12 kernel you have to enable the -proposed repositories. The official ones have the 2.6.27-11 yet.
Anyway, for completeness of the howto I'm going to put back a link to the fixed 2.6.27-11 kernel, for users that prefer to stick with standard repositories only. Check the main post for the link

Once you have a fixed kernel installed, you need to map the FN keys to their respective functions. This is a job done by HAL daemon.

All you have to do is to open (with admin rights) the file /usr/share/hal/fdi/information/10freedesktop/30-keymap-misc.fdi

'voRia' pid='33' dateline='1234867000' wrote:
Hi!
To get the 2.6.27-12 kernel you have to enable the -proposed repositories. The official ones have the 2.6.27-11 yet.
Anyway, for completeness of the howto I'm going to put back a link to the fixed 2.6.27-11 kernel, for users that prefer to stick with standard repositories only. Check the main post for the link

Once you have a fixed kernel installed, you need to map the FN keys to their respective functions. This is a job done by HAL daemon.

All you have to do is to open and edit (with admin rights) the file /usr/share/hal/fdi/information/10freedesktop/30-keymap-misc.fdi

Thanks for the post and the additional explanations.
I have done all the steps described above and finally my screen brightness keys work. Thank you very much for that.
Other than that, it does not seem that any other Fn keys have been enabled.
My F4 & F5 are still dead. Is there an additional key mapping that needs to be done?

Thanks once again for the grate work that you have done to put together this much needed website.

Hi!
It's strange that no other FN keys work.
When you add "NC10" to the list of supported devices from hal, almost all of the FN keys should be automatically enabled.

To be more precise, these are the keys which should work with no additional work:
FN-ESC, FN-F2, FN-F6, FN-F10, FN-F11, FN-F12, FN-LEFT, FN-RIGHT, FN-UP, FN-DOWN.

The FN-F3, FN-F5, FN-F7, FN-F8, FN-F9 keys should be enabled too, but not mapped to anything. You can map them manually to launch a program or a script. You can find an example of how to do this in my "how to enable wireless" thread, where you can find instructions to map the FN-F9 key to a script that toggle wireless on/off.

For replicating the same functionalities given by FN-F5 and FN-F8 with Windows, I'll write an howto as soon as possible.

The FN-F4 key is the only one I have not tested. After a little edit of the usual hal file, it makes the screen "flicker" when pressed but I can't say it's really working.

thanks mate, I suppose I was not quite clear when saying no other keys work. all those that work out of the box continue to be operational.
Right now I have the ESC, F2, F10, F11, F12, Home, End, VolumeUpDown, BrightnessUpDown.

The F6 - mute - it has visual effect, i.e. it changes the volume icon in the sys bar to muted, however the sound goes on. The only way to effectively mute is to turn it down with the Fn+left/right keys.

I was hoping that with your fix F4 (external screen) and F5 (dim the screen) will also work. Form your post above is looks like you are working on the F4.
Looking forward to more developments. I will try to look around and see if these info on how to map the other keys. will post back if i find something.
great work voRia

The FN-F6 problem is because of a bug in the alsa driver of the latest ubuntu kernels. It's a minor glitch, not too much annoying in my opinion, so I didn't care about it.
Anyway it can be easily fixed by installing a newer alsa driver taken directly from jaunty.
Maybe I should start a new thread about it.

As I said, the F5 is easily fixed too, with a script that toggles the brightness (using xbacklight utility) when launched.
Another thread that I will start.

Instead, the F4 key does not work, and I really don't know what to do to fix it... I'll continue to investigate the problem.

I'm sorry for being slow to add contents here, these days I have not so much freetime.
However, I do promise to write something new soon